Secondly. I would have you remember, as long as you live, your great deliverance, and the several circumstances of it, and those necessary duties that are incumbent upon you in relation thereunto.

It is evident to daily experience, that while afflictions are upon us, and while deliverances are fresh, they commonly have some good effect upon us; but as the iron is no sooner out of the fire, but it quickly returns to its old coldness and hardness, so when the affliction or deliverance is past, we usually forget them, count them common things, attribute them to means and second causes: and so the good that mankind should gather from them vanishes, and men grow quickly to be but what they were before they came; their sick-bed promises are forgot, when the sickness is over.

of

And therefore I shall give you an account your sickness and of your recovery; and let them never be forgotten by you. As often as those spots and marks in your face are reflected to your view from the glass; as often as this paper comes in your sight; nay, as often as you open your eyes from sleep, which were once closed, and likely never to open again;

so often, and more often, remember your sickness and your recovery, and the admonitions that this paper lends you from the consideration of both.

First. Therefore, touching your late sickness, I would have you remember these particulars.-1. The disease itself, in its own nature, is now become ordinarily very mortal, especially to those of your age. Look upon even the last year's general bill of mortality; you will find near two thousand, dead of that disease the last year; and had not God been very merciful to you, you might have been one of that number, with as great likelihood as any of them that died of that disease, 2. It was a contagious disease, that secluded the access of your nearest relations. 3. Your sickness surprised you upon a sudden, when you seemed to be in your full strength. 4. Your sickness rendered you noisome to yourself, and all that were about you; and a spectacle full of deformity, by the excess of your disease beyond most that are sick thereof. 5. It was a fierce and violent sickness: it did not only take away the common supplies of nature, as

digestion, sleep, strength, but it took away your memory, your understanding, and the very sense of your own condition, or of what might be conducible to your good. All that you could do, was only to make your condition more desperate, in case they that were about you had not prevented it, and taken more care for you than you did or could for yourself. 6. Your sickness was desperate, insomuch that your symptoms, and the violence of your distemper, were without example; and you were in the very next degree to absolute rottenness, putrefaction, and death itself.

Look upon the foregoing description, and remember that such was your condition. You were as sad a picture of mortality and corruption, as any thing but death itself could make: remember it; and remember also these ensuing instructions, that may make that remembrance profitable and useful to you.—

I. Remember, that "affliction cometh not forth of the dust, nor doth trouble spring out of the ground*;" but this terrible visitation was sent to you from the wise over-ruling

* Job, v. 6.

providence of God: it is he that bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up again. It is true that this disease may seem common; but you may and must know, that there was more than the common hand of God in sending it upon you in such a manner, and such a measure, and at such a season, when you were grown up to a competent age and degree of understanding to make a due use of it, that you might see his justice in afflicting you, and his goodness in delivering you from such a danger.

II. Remember that Almighty God is of most infinite wisdom, justice, and mercy. He hath excellent ends in all his dispensations of his providence. He never sends an affliction, but it brings a message with it: his rod has a voice, a voice commanding us to search and try our ways, and to examine ourselves whether there hath not been some great sin against him, or neglect of duty to him; a voice commanding us to repent of what is amiss, to humble ourselves under his mighty hand, to turn to him that striketh us, to seek to him by prayer for deliverance, to depend upon him by faith in his mercy and power, to amend what

is amiss, to be more watchful, circumspect, and obedient to him in the future course of our lives, to fear to offend him. And if a man hear this voice, God hath his end of mercy and goodness, and man hath the fruit, benefit, and advantage of his affliction, and commonly a comfortable issue of it. Read often and attentively the 33d chapter of Job, from the beginning to the end.

III. Remember how uncertain and frail a creature man is, even in his seeming strongest age and constitution of health; even then, a pestilential air, some evil humour in his blood, some obstruction, it may be, of a little vein or artery, a little meat ill digested, and a thousand small occurrences may, upon a sudden, without any considerable warning, plunge a man into a desperate and mortal sickness, and bring a man to the grave. Remember this terrible sickness seized upon you suddenly, pulled down your strength quickly, and brought you to the very brink of the grave. And though God hath recovered you, you know not how soon you may be brought into the like con. dition.

IV. Remember, therefore, that you make